Feet Upon the Ground
by smolder
Summary: "By eleven, Bella was well aware that her family was scared of her." An AU in which the Healers of the Wizarding World stay up to date on psychology and Professors know warning signs to look for. Bellatrix POV.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling.  
A/N: Reviews are Good. This has been a subtle hint from the author - Please return to your regularly scheduled reading.

* * *

chapter one: never inconsequential

It is sometimes hard for Bella to latch onto her early years. They have a dark tinge to them in her memory – a heavy miasma that makes her cold when she studies it to long. And for the most part she does not wish to because the life she has built for herself is better – so, so very much better then the one she was forced to live through the first eleven years of her life.

_Eleven_, he will be eleven tomorrow. She traces the name in the file on her desk and frowns as the thoughts she wished to keep away flow over her anyway.

Her mind may be spotty for most of her first decade of life (_continued use of sedatives – spell, Mind Magic, potions, or herbs in her food - would do that_) but she does know quite well, that they kept her separate from everyone not _family_ until she entered Hogwarts. And even her play alongside Andromeda and Narcissa was heavily monitored. Calmly having tea with their dolls one moment, her Mother would leave the room to take a Floo call and when she returned, all of the lovely toys would be beheaded and she would have one sister cowering under the couch and the other pinned to the floor.

They could not let others see one of their own like that - Blacks were notorious for their tempers, yes. Usually it was even an encouraged trait: good to keep their competitive edge in the Wizarding World.

But in Bella it was just..._too much_, too uncontrolled, too unpredictable. Because she would be happy, ecstatically so and then get _angry_, so very angry, about tiny, inconsequential things – but they were never inconsequential to her, to her they were huge. They were _everything_. And whoever went against her became her enemy.

All emotions were like that though, as if they were overwhelming to the small witch's body and able to change quicker then the wind in a hurricane. When she grew out of one of her favorite dresses she was not just sad, she cried heavy sobs of pain – almost mourning the thing for a week. And then a cousin's off hand comment switched her right back to violent anger again

It made her family on guard at all times for the shift, her parents ready to throw a stunning spell at her, her sisters ready to scream for help.

By eleven, Bella was well aware that her family was scared of her.

(_She was aware of how alone she was even in the House of her blood._)

And even when her Hogwort's letter came (_her parent's visibly relieved – she would not be there responsibility to deal with now, for a few months of the year at least_) she did not leave the confines of the Black estate, to go to and get her supplies from Diagon Alley alongside her siblings. Instead another potion that made her thoughts float, was forced down her throat right before a slight, scared looking, woman came to measure her for school robes – and then a man with many boxes placed wands in her hand until one hummed. She hummed back, swishing it instinctively breaking two chairs and the unknown man's arm.

Bellatrix cackled in delight and then snarled when her Mother snatched the wand from her. She tried to grab it back – it was _hers_ – but the potion had made her groggy, her reactions slow. 

* * *

"Slytherin!" the Hat yelled but Bellatrix was not paying attention, disturbed by how the thing had felt within her mind. (_It was made worse as well, because she was still hazy from being drugged, again. Hidden in her breakfast this time - what felt like a lot more then she was used to, right before the went off to the train station. Andromeda had sat beside her as a buffer and explained away her vacant staring as shyness and nerves_.). It was like when her Father used to try looking in her eyes to calm her down (_he had stopped as she was six, when he noticed how being in her mind was affecting his own_), the way she could always feel him slipping through her brain. She _hated_ it, he shouldn't be in there – it was _hers_. And she despised this intrusion just as much.

Before the Deputy Headmistress could remove it, she pulled the enchanted object from her head – holding the edges of the wide brim carefully in her hand, looking down into it's interior as if searching for it's secrets with a puzzled frown. _How did it do this? How did it look within her, without her permission, when it had no eyes, no brain, no soul? _

She heard her name being called and looked up at Professor McGonagall; she saw the older witch give her a firm smile, pointing to the table of her new House while holding her other hand out for the brown patched fabric still in her possession. Bellatrix looked in the direction she pointed, where her family was all seated watching her warily, then back at the waiting woman but didn't make a move to get off the stool, on which she still sat. She simply stared for a long moment – then a grin pulled across her face (_far more wide then her Mother would ever think proper but at least she wasn't cackling this time_) and then, with no warning, she pulled her hands swiftly apart even wider then her grin – not flinching in the least at the sound of tearing fabric or the screams from the Hat.

Bellatrix just smiled and her dark flat eye's never left the Professor's cat like ones. 

* * *

_Emotionally unstable personality disorder_ was what the Healer called specially from St. Mungo's as soon as she was stunned and taken straight from the Great Hall to the Infirmary, had determined after many diagnosis spells – and many more sessions speaking with him for what seemed hours upon hours over the course of weeks. (_And there had been still years, upon years, of therapy with Healer Jim after that._)

And with the identification had come a course of treatments – treatments to which her parents hastily agreed to and paid for, realizing quite readily that while a crazy daughter was not socially satisfactory, a crazy daughter who had a tendency to make a scene - _very violently_ - heedless to whom she was harming, or where it was occurring, was a much worse alternative.

So, off and on, through her First Year and Second Year, Bella had tried one set of potions or another – some made her tired, dizzy, violently ill, or simply did not help _at all_. And during this time she was kept separate from the other students outside of classes, for both of their sakes. She had a small room near the Infirmary and met with the Mind Healer three times a week.

It was right before her Third Year started that they landed on a combination that worked for her: a potion that was just in the testing stages that and worked mostly as a mood stabilizer,as well as meditation and therapy.

Later in life she would add Legilimency and Occlumency to her repartee. 

* * *

Bellatrix moved her finger across the parchment from the boy's name to another more familiar one.

Her cousin. Sirius. Harry Potter's Godfather.

She had little love for him growing up – brash and loud, he did not understand what she had went through trying to get a handle on herself and her classes at Hogwarts. And, from their very few interactions, had made it rather clear that he did not _want_ to understand either, because she was Slytherin and he was Gryffindor, and that told him everything he needed to know back then.

But regardless of the people they had been then, she found herself angry in ways she had not been since she was younger at the way his trial was treated. Truly it did not deserve the term, since there had been no actual assembly of people, no evidence given before a judge, or guilty verdict. Simply Sirius Black – her cousin – being thrown into Azkaban because he was found at the scene of a crime.

She was not blind to the politics involved in this, she knew they wanted this War to have ended and these sticky loose ends to simply not exist. But they _did_ – and whether guilty or innocent, in the end – he was a Black, and deserved a chance at legal proceeding just as much as those fucking Death Eaters whom they paraded around for show trials.

Bellatrix, like all Healers, was firmly Neutral. But it galled her badly every time she had seen Dumbledore at those proceedings - that they would go to such effort to exonerate the Dark when Sirius had worked so for their stupid group of Light for years and no one would lift a finger now that he needed it.

It struck her this hard perhaps, because she felt so acutely aware of the fact that, despite their magical strength, Blacks were not the psychologically strongest. Magic came to them _easily_, but within their own minds there were just so many landmines - in both there upbringing and their genetics. Azkaban, surrounded by those horrible Dementors, would not be good to him.

After Hogwarts, she had ended up studying her own family rather extensively because of her career. It was easy to choose a profession, the subject she was most passionate about was the field that had effected her most in her life: _Mind Healing_. And as she learned about the social, environmental, and genetic aspects involved she had taken a step back and saw disturbing patterns within the Blacks.

With a sigh she dismissed the already well-trod thoughts and let her eyes move back to the original name she had been pondering:

_Harry Potter. _

After the James and Lily had been killed he should have gone to Sirius to care for, that had been their wish. But with him incarcerated Bellatrix had felt that responsibility should have fallen upon his House to uphold in his stead. She was going to say as much before the Courts.

But...Dumbledore had obviously not held the same views. He had taken the child somewhere and hidden him away behind wards even before Wizengot could be called to make a decision.

She tried looking anyway – year upon year passed – and just as she did not stop petitioning for visitation rights to Azkaban, she did not stop searching for clues as to the Harry's whereabouts.

Which reminded her, she had an appointment rather soon and needed to dress the part. She wondered what he might let slip this year.


End file.
